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The big Phil Fish, Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian discussion thread
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,433 CMod ✭✭✭✭
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like for example, in Binary Domain, if you hit on the hooker, your friendship with most characters goes down, they think less of you for it, it completely subverts the trope but she still used it as an example.
Now I can't find a video of that particular mechanic at play to see it in context, and it has been ages since I played the game, so my interpretation might be wrong here. But the way you describe it makes it sound even worse. It only reinforces the prostitute as a worthless background object, worthy of disdain, used to conjure cheap 'grittiness', and you're actually punished (albeit in a completely arbitrary way) for interacting with her (hitting on her). It subverts nothing.
Really subverting the trope would be interacting with the prostitute and discovering a character with motivations, personality and a story to tell, or giving her a useful gameplay role to play.
We are talking about a game, after all, where a major character wonders - and sadly I quote - 'when did ho's get standards?' after talking with the most embarrassing stereotype of a prostitute imaginable (not that the male NPCs are any better developed, mind you - Binary Domain's strengths don't lie in its script). Some troubling response from the player here as well:
There's no doubt other tools are regularly abused to crassly create a sense of 'maturity' in games (and film too), but Binary Domain as far as I'd be concerned is a more than valid example here, and a case of utterly appalling writing to boot.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50555
Little CuChulainn wrote: »Reminds me of the Mass Effect sex scene scandal. Critics going on like it was some sort of space sex simulator when the reality was a PG scene only seen following a long relationship
It reminds me more of the Mass Effect 3 ending issue. A bunch of man children on the internet up in arms over a total non issue.
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,433 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 28144
Tiddlypeeps wrote: »People don't like being accused of being prejudiced. She essentially said that most video games are sexist which would imply that anyone who buys into those games is also sexist. Not only that but she is misrepresenting games and their motives to get this point across. Things like the Hitman game, where one scene in the entire game has strippers in it that you can kill if you want to, but the game literally punishes you for doing so, it encourages you to be stealthy and avoid them completely. She represents this as the game encouraging you to do horrible things to these women. She could have made reasonable points about the presence of the scantily clad women in the game being unnecessary, but she didn't she needed to absolutely vilify the developers by saying they actively encourage you to do horrible things to women, making anyone who enjoyed playing this game feel like they are sexist scum.
Can't let that one pass without comment, although the posts above said it too. You're making wild implications here. I don't think there's anything (or at least not very much) in the videos designed to make any players or developers feel like sexist scum, and if they do well that's taking offence to commentary that is not there. The sort of content criticism she is doing applies to the content itself rather than the creators or consumers. It's vitally important that critics are allowed discuss the content and potential readings / consequences without it being implied it is also a personal attack. There's a huge difference between saying 'a game features sexist tropes' and 'the developers of this game are misogynists and sexists, and so are all the players who play it'. You'll find Sarkeesian sensibly avoids the latter train of thought, as there are countless reasons why a game may feature that sort of content, and few of them are are borne out of active misogyny.
As for Hitman Absolution, which seems to be constantly invoked as the definitive evidence of Sarkeesian's misrepresentation of games (is it because the other dozens of examples she uses are much harder to refute?), well here's a video posted in this thread a while back that IMO gives a more in-depth response to the game sequence in question and in context than Sarkeesian did. Although maybe Sarkeesian should have used the Hitman Sniper Challenge clip instead, which I'd struggle to imagine anybody thinking is okay :eek:
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johnny_ultimate wrote: »Can't let that one pass without comment, although the posts above said it too. You're making wild implications here. I don't think there's anything (or at least not very much) in the videos designed to make any players or developers feel like sexist scum, and if they do well that's taking offence to commentary that is not there. The sort of content criticism she is doing applies to the content itself rather than the creators or consumers. It's vitally important that critics are allowed discuss the content and potential readings / consequences without it being implied it is also a personal attack. There's a huge difference between saying 'a game features sexist tropes' and 'the developers of this game are misogynists and sexists, and so are all the players who play it'. You'll find Sarkeesian sensibly avoids the latter train of thought, as there are countless reasons why a game may feature that sort of content, and few of them are are borne out of active misogyny.
As for Hitman Absolution, which seems to be constantly invoked as the definitive evidence of Sarkeesian's misrepresentation of games (is it because the other dozens of examples she uses are much harder to refute?), well here's a video posted in this thread a while back that IMO gives a more in-depth response to the game sequence in question and in context than Sarkeesian did. Although maybe Sarkeesian should have used the Hitman Sniper Challenge clip instead, which I'd struggle to imagine anybody thinking is okay :eek:
I didn't watch all the video because it's guilty of the exact same things he is accusing thunderfoot of so I stopped about 10 minutes in, let me know if the last 20 minutes are really worth it. They both cherry pick and ignore anything that disagrees with them.
Just because thunderfoot does a pretty poor job of arguing his initial point, does not make that point invalid.
I would imagine the reason the Hitman game is honed in on for that particular video is because the only other brutal examples of violence against women are from GTA and Saints Row, where nobody is going to argue that violence against women isn't common place. It's also an extrame example of taking a neiche scenario that is in no way encouraged by the game, it is simply possible, and playing it up to sound like it is actively encouraged.
In reference a piece she says on specifically constructed violent scenarios she runs the clip of the hit man game and says this over it:
"Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during the play through. The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon. Because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representation of female sexuality."
She may have been talking about all games there, but she ran the hitman clip because it's the best looking example of what she wants to portray.
Earlier in the video she also uses a clip from the same setting in hitman, of a place where the player has no reason to be and she says this "These active viewing mechanics encourage players to collaborate with developers in sexual objectification by enabling players to scope out and spy on non playable sex objects."
She does a similar thing with Fallout, where you can pick up the body of a scantily clad women and move it around like a ragdoll. Ignoring the fact that you can do this with literally every non-essential character in the game and the game in no way encourages you to violently murder women, you will in fact be punished for it if you do it in the cities where the scantily clad women are found.
She states that violent behaviour isn't mandatory, but is often implicitly encouraged. But she never explains how it's encouraged, unless she is trying to say that simply because it's possible it is therefore encouraged but that logic doesn't follow. She then goes on to completely disregard how most of the games she comments on punish you for committing violence against women by saying that usually the resulting chase from the cops or whoever is fun.
She then goes on with this beauty:
"Women are constantly represented as primarily for sex. Men may be sexual too but they can also be anything else. They’re not defined by or reduced to their sexuality and their sexuality is not thought of as something existing chiefly for the pleasure of others. Which means the fundamentally dominant position of men in our culture is not in anyway challenged or diminished by their rare male depiction as a sex worker."
Completely ignoring all the strong female characters out there and claiming that only women can be harmed by sexual stereotypes.
In the summary bit of the women as background video she describes how objectifying women in games causes women to have eating disorders and mental disorders such as depression. While in men it makes them view women as less intelligent and less competent. It makes all genders more tolerant of sexual harassment and rape. Without once backing up what she says with any sort of evidence.
"The more you think you cannot be effected the more likely you are to be effected."
I assume this is the quote shruikan2553 was referring to.
Some other areas that stood out to me that seem to be calling developers and gamers sexist are in a piece describing how games turn women into vending machines dispensing goods and services:
"When men are depicted using female NPC’s as tools or commodities, their actions are portrayed as part of what makes them powerful, which is by extension part of what makes the player then feel powerful."
And near the end she states:
"Unlike traditional media gaming offers players the unique opportunity to use and exploit female bodies themselves. This forces gamers to become complicit with developers in making sexual objectification a participatory activity."
I am not arguing that women as background decoration isn't an overused trope, Anita even makes the odd good point about it. But that is drastically taken away from when she tries to make the issue much bigger and more significant than it really is, especially when she uses misinformation and exaggeration to achieve this.
Anyway I'm harping on my original point was the reason she is so disliked is she makes people feel they are being accused of sexism simply for playing games, not because people can't handle criticism of games because people have been doing that for a long time with no reprocussions. She uses the phrase "gamers are complicit with the developers a lot", why use the word complicit if she is not accusing?0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZmf-bTdLY0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-tkrxAEWw
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